minerstat mining tutorial #25: Profit switch with zpool

minerstat
minerstat
Published in
7 min readJan 22, 2019

In this tutorial, we will show you how to set up profit switch for mining on a multi-algo pool with more than 50 algorithms - zpool.

About zpool

zpool is a multi-algo pool where you direct your hashing power to an algorithm and the pool chooses which coins are most profitable to mine for you. You can use any valid wallet addresses from any of the coins that are mined on the zpool, but it is recommended to use BTC. As with other multi-algo pools, the payout option is defined in the password as c=BTC. The c= password must be set and match the wallet address used. For example, if you want to be paid in XVG, a password should be set as c=XVG and provided wallet address should be your XVG wallet address. No matter which payout currency you have selected, minerstat will show you the income in BTC.

BTC payouts are processed once a day for balances above 0.0025. Payouts for all other currencies are made automatically every 4 hours for balances above 0.05 and balances more than 0.0125 are included in one of the payouts each day.

The fee for mining on zpool is 1% or 1.25%, depending on the algorithm. There is no fee applied on the payout.

About minerstat’s profit switch

We have introduced profit switch in one of our previous tutorials. It is a function that is managed remotely from your minerstat dashboard. So to use it, you will need to register a new account at minerstat and set up minerstat software on any of your mining devices. We offer mining OS if you prefer Linux, Windows node if you prefer Windows, and ASIC hub for ASIC owners.

If you need help in setting everything up, you can check our tutorial on how to start with minerstat.

Address editor

When you have all the software ready and working, your first step is the address editor.

Address editor is your pools and wallets address book. So along with other pools already defined, you need to define zpool addresses for algorithms you want to mine. We suggest you use tags that will help you easily distinguish between zpool addresses and other addresses. For example, ZP-LYRA2Z for Lyra2z zpool address.

In our case, we will set up a profit switch for Nvidia GTX1080. The algorithms that we are interested in are Lyra2REv2, Lyra2z, X16R, and NeoScrypt.

The pool addresses need to be defined as stratum+tcp://ALGO.REGION.mine.zpool.ca:PORT where ALGO is the algorithm’s name, REGION is one of the regions, and PORT is the port for mining this algorithm. You can find stratum generator on zpool’s main page. For our case, we will use:

  • Lyra2REv2: stratum+tcp://lyra2v2.eu.mine.zpool.ca:4533
  • Lyra2Z: stratum+tcp://lyra2z.eu.mine.zpool.ca:4553
  • X16R: stratum+tcp://x16r.eu.mine.zpool.ca:3636
  • Neoscrypt: stratum+tcp://neoscrypt.eu.mine.zpool.ca:4233

You can add other algorithms in the same way. When you are deciding which algorithms to include in the profit switch, we suggest you check our coins list. Besides coins and algorithms, you will also find a list of supported hardware and software for this coin/algorithm. Additionally, you can open the mining calculator and select AMD/Nvidia/ASIC to see which algorithms are available for your worker(s).

After the pools are set, we also need to define BTC wallet if we haven’t added it yet.

You can also be paid in any of the coins that are mined at zpool, see the selection of the coins here. BTC is the only guaranteed payout coin, any of the alt-coins can be dropped at any time for any reason.

Profit switch

After we have defined all pools and wallets in the address editor, our next destination is profit switch.

Target

First, select the workers to which you want to apply the profit switch. You can select one or more workers or one or more groups.

Coins

Select the coins/algorithms you want to include to the profit switch. Make sure to select the correct corresponding pool, BTC wallet and to type in the correct pool fee (1% or 1.25% for zpool).

If you want to use default mining client and configs, you can leave the mining client at Autoselect. On the other hand, if you want to make custom configs for each option (this is required if you want to be paid out in any other currency than BTC or if you prefer one mining client over other), select mining client and edit its configs by clicking on the gray wrench icon. Please don’t forget that if you select the custom configuration, you will need to replace tags with appropriate ones.

Hashrate and consumption settings

For a profit switch to work, we need to define the speeds the worker reach on certain algorithms. If you haven’t tried mining all algorithms yet, you can browse the internet to find some default values and then update them after you first switch to this algorithm and you will be able to see the exact speed.

Our GTX1080 reaches the following speeds on msOS:

Optionally add power consumption and change the overclocking profile.

Dual mining

We won’t be dual mining in this case so we can skip this section and leave values at 0. If not, the procedure is the same as with typing speeds and power consumption for other algorithms.

Electricity costs

Enter the amount you pay for kW/h. In our case, this is 0.11 EUR for kW/h.

When to switch?

Set the minimum difference in coin profitability and minimum mining time to trigger switch.

The minimum difference means that new coin will be selected only when it is X% more profitable than the coin you are currently mining. You can set up any value larger than 0%, we also allow decimal numbers. In this case, we will set 0.5%. If the current coin is making 1 USD/day and the new coin suitable for the switch is making 1.005 USD, we will switch to the new coin. If we would set 5%, the new coin should be making at least 1.05 USD to switch to it.

Minimum mining time tells how frequently the options for profit switch should be checked. As zpool is a PROP pool, we will set 10 minutes.

Reward method

Select which reward method you want to use.

  • The normal method will take reward as provided through zpool API.
  • Ignore the outliers method will ignore the spikes that might happen for one option and are temporary (considered as outliers).
  • Apply penalties method will apply a penalty to each option in regard to how dispersed the reward data is.

You can read more about the different reward methods here.

Save changes.

Activate profit switch

After you have saved changes, you have only saved the configuration that will be used for profit switch. To really start profit switching, you will need to activate it for your miner.

  1. Open your workers’ config page.
  2. Select the same target as you did in profit switch.
  3. Scroll down to Profit switch.
  4. Click on the gray square to make Profit switch option checked and included in the update.
  5. Select Enabled from the drop-down.
  6. Scroll at the bottom and click on Save changes.

This will activate the profit switch and within 10 minutes your first profit switch selection should be active.

If you have a smaller number of workers you can activate profit switch directly from workers page. Click on Switch icon and toggle Profit switch option to enable it.

You can check your balance on zpool on their wallet page or add it to your pools balance monitoring on the minerstat dashboard.

Happy mining!

More from this series:

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